There's GetDeb, but I'm not using it yet. I've got questions that the GetDeb site doesn't have answers for: who runs it? What releases do they package? Are program authors involved in any way? Are the programs modified before they land in the repository? As an issue of trust, I'm more willing to add repositories like Banshee's official PPA to Software Sources over a third-party I know nothing about.The answers:
"who runs it" - A community of volunteers, list of individuals which can upload to the "-testing" repository is available from https://launchpad.net/~getdeb-uploaders/+members . A more restricted subset can copy packages from -testing to the general repository.
"What releases do they package?" - The general policy is to provide the current stable version, there are exceptions, we provide development releases when recommended by program authors.
"Are program authors involved in any way?" - It depends, on some cases package requests are received from the program authors, on other cases we just grab the authors source and there is no interaction.
"Are the programs modified before they land in the repository?" - In general no, on some rare cases we do apply building/integration fixes, on those cases we send the fixes to the author's also.
